The House of Silk reads for most of its length like a homage. It's enormously involving and entertaining, and even funny in parts: Kindly Watson describes Scotland Yard's hapless Inspector Lestrade as having "the general demeanour of a rat who has been obliged to dress up for lunch at the Savoy."
But for large chunks of the novel, set in 1890, the reader wonders what the purpose of the new adventure is. It works just fine as a spirited Holmesian thriller, but could use more literary ambition. By the end, though, the novel shows itself to be something more. So enjoy the ride, and be assured it's going somewhere.
The House of Silk is presented as a Holmes story too disturbing for Watson to publish in his lifetime. Aging, and suffering from an old war wound, as a new "terrible and senseless war rages on the Continent," Watson plans to instruct that the tale be embargoed for 100 years. "It is impossible to imagine what the world will be like then . . . but perhaps future readers will be more inured to scandal and corruption than my own would have been."
A big challenge for Horowitz is juggling two separate inquiries with bewildering links to each other.
The first one begins when Edmund Carstairs, a fine-art dealer from Wimbledon who feels menaced by a man in a flat cap who he believes has followed him from America, engages Holmes to investigate. Carstairs had been the accidental victim of a train robbery in Massachusetts that led in the ensuing weeks to half a dozen killings.
The second inquiry begins when young Ross, one of the Baker Street Irregulars, is found beaten to death, his throat cut and a white silk ribbon knotted around his wrist.
